#Defira plays Dragon Age

[defira85]

It's been several days now, I can talk about that big choice that happens after Davrin's recruitment now right? That BIG one?

I cannot find a way to justify a world in which I'd ever choose Minrathous over Treviso. One is a civilian city with no central government, no defence infrastructure, no army or militia, and is actively under siege with civilians forbidden from carrying weapons. The other is the largest fucking city in the world, in the largest and most powerful empire in the world, full of the most powerful mages in the world, with defence infrastructure that has withstood the Qunari assault for centuries, with a huge standing army

Yes they wanted me to believe that almost EVERY mage in power is now Venatori which is........ a stretch, honestly, why are so many power hungry magisters enthusiastically bending the knee when it means an immediate restriction of their powers under Elgar'nan when we've been told consistently for 4 games that magisters are manipulative and power hungry and backstabbing and ambitious. Why would they agree to immediately have their centre of power destroyed and blighted? Immediate financial hit, there's no way magisters wouldn't care about loss of income, and now they've lost all the political power they had in the magisterium to become rank and file Venatori

I don't know. They wanted me to believe it's a balanced choice, like one is the same as the other, but when I told Neve I didn't believe a single dragon could disrupt Minrathous, both I and Beren believe that!!! I DON'T believe it was an equivalent choice. Treviso is the obvious choice to save. I'm bewildered by it. Like, you could argue that that's the horror of Elgar'nan's power, even a city you thought was impregnable was taken in an hour but

It wasn't an equal choice and I'm pissed about it being treated like one

[defira85]

With the proviso that I have not finished the game and I in a really shitty mood about my Rook's body type breaking in the romance cut scene specifically, I have thoughts-

I saw a post that said that Veilguard is so fundamentally determined to say nothing that sometimes it comes out as incredibly offensive with just how aggressively noncommittal it is

and that's really it, isn't it

Shadow Dragon Rook got into trouble for saving slaves, and the Viper is a vigilante saving slaves, but we never SEE any slavery. We see poverty and abuse, but there's no talk about the rigid castes within Tevinter. Maybe the Venatori were drawn primarily from the lower classes of mages, those without family seats in the Magisterium, who were drawn to the promise that they could accumulate power instead of being trapped in a system that dooms them to failure and looks down its nose at them for being born not important enough

Tevinter's whole thing across the series has been slavery!!! And we get one or two codex entries about how Dorian gave such a nice speech about "slavery bad :c" and that's it

The Crows are so utterly toothless. Just an aggressively white-washed cool vigilante group, no hint of their child abuse or slavery practices, where's the acknowledgement that they make a lot of their money from slavery?

Lucanis' year in solitary confinement and torture is just window dressing. Again, haven't finished the game, but no examination of it at all 45 hours in. There's so much literature about what solitary confinement does to a person, how it's a form of torture, and just thinking about how much of Zevran's past abuses were woven into his characterisation so carefully... it's like chalk and cheese

Davrin once again filling the role of Bioware's obligatory "elf who hates being an elf and aggressively denies all elven heritage" companion

And like... every mini villain is just someone who was too ambitious and that made them eeeeevil. All the companions' rivals get dropped on Rook without any build-up, no casual conversations to say "oh I had this ex-friend/rival/foe who shaped me". Maybe I've been spoiled by Baldur's Gate 3 and how carefully all of the companions' abusers were woven into who they were as a character and how it shaped them and their story. Gortash didn't just come out of nowhere, Karlach was mentioning him in chapter 1! There were codex entries about him to be found weeks before you met him! But who the fuck is Johanna Hezenberouasertrousers or whatever the fuck her name is. She was ambitious, TOO ambitious, so she's evil and Emmrich's mirror. Cyrian joined the Forgotten Ones, and sure the Evanuris turned out to be super evil abusers that all the myths and religion was super wrong about but this is WORSE CYRIAN HOW COULD YOU

Don't get me started on whatever the fuck the game is trying to say about religion and about faith. Gods, it's so mid 2000s atheist edgelord memeing "unfortunately for you.... I have reason and logic on my side....... checkmate religion..." There's no nuance at all!!!!! Just "religion is a lie so faith dies now" no acknowledgement of faith as a cultural force!!! Of CULTURE being shaped by faith!!!! Okay I said don't get me started, I'll stop now

Whatever the fuck they're doing with the Qunari. They really just have gone back to their incredibly racist roots of "islamic borg" as David Gaider called it but they've made it even more offensive by making them all so... I don't know what word I'm looking for is, but it's about the sex appeal. How they've got their entire chiselled asses out. They look like they're trying to take part in Mister Bodybuilder Treviso, not a vaguely regimented army that was incredibly carefully structured up until about 5 minutes ago

This was more than what I intended to write lmfao. It's a fun game! I'm enjoying myself, as a fun action RPG. But after Baldur's Gate 3, it's just so utterly spineless. It has nothing to say. Evil people are evil, good people are good. It doesn't take a stand about anything. It is so determined not to be offensive to anyone at all that I find it gross

I'll finish it, and then I'll go back to BG3

[defira85]

Lucanis and Bellara in a team together are THE choice because all they do is bitch about how none of the others can cook or use spices and it's so funny

[defira85]

She's not entirely perfectly what I had in my head, but meet Beren "Rook" Vestrius. I like that she doesn't look like a dewy faced teenage hero, she looks like she's in her late 30s and has a bit of weariness to her. I'll be honest, I struggled with the CC and I know I accidentally reset my customisations for her at least once but. She's still pretty good despite that

We won't talk about what Corinne looked like though

[defira85]

Mr Defira is very mean and he cranked up Battle of Helm's Deep section of The Two Towers soundtrack as I started Weisshaupt

[defira85]

I think it was @iapetusneume who wanted to see the difference. Behold! The physics defying booty cape, versus the flat embarrassment that is Beren's ass the rest of the time

I remain relatively unimpressed with Bioware's idea of a "fat" body. As bad as I thought the swtor "fat" bodies were in 2011, I can't believe it's 20-fucking-24 and we're yet to do better than them. I could drive a fucking oil tanker between that thigh gap. Yes, it's better than Larian who had nothing on offer for fat bodies except a devil and a mutant experiment, no, I'm not fucking satisfied with it

[defira85]

GOD okay so some feedback on my predictions for romances based on the first twelve hours

BELLARA FEELING HAUNTED BY HER BROTHER'S DEATH??? When Kas is haunted by the fact that Vaaran left the Qun for her, to save her, and now Vaaran is dying from the Calling because she joined the Wardens for her, oh my god, I couldn't have WRITTEN BETTER MYSELF. Two bubbly mages HAUNTED TOGETHER

Dhraoibhan and Davrin. Hmm. He's got a much more gym bro vibe than I was expecting. It might work? Not sure so far if it'll work

Emmrich I've only just gotten, but he seems brighter and more enthusiastic than I thought he might, will have to see if that will work with Vaaran? I want him to feel more angst about her imminent death, I know I won't get that in the game and I'd have to write it myself, but hmm. Hmmmmmmmm.

NEVE AND HEDY. Oh boy. I think they'd work excellently together but. The Virmire Choice. People who have gotten far enough know what I mean, and the rest of you will recognise it immediately once it happens. I just... I'm struggling to find a way to justify picking Neve's path in ANY playthrough, let alone Hedy's playthrough which is all about helping the little guys because she's ex Casteless (Captain Brand, she literally wears it as a badge of pride). And I'd heard if you didn't pick Neve there it locks you out of the romance. FUCK. I don't know. I have to do some soul-searching

Harding and Luci is going to work just fine I think. Nothing huge about it

I'm thoroughly disappointed with Lucanis so far, you can absolutely tell they fired Mary Kirby 2 years before the game dropped because his writing is just so... flat. He's such a weird edgelord. On paper you'd think he'd be my favourite but jesus. Anyway I'll romance him with my bloodmage cousin of Hawke and ruin his life and I'll have fun where she can fully see Spite the whole time and pretends she can't to soothe his ego

Taash I don't feel like I've gotten to know well enough to know yet but I think she's fine for Nomi. We'll see once I get to know her more.

I think Beren is going to end up with Solas FUCK

Harding said that one line about "maybe you'll be the one to teach him how to see the world differently" or whatever it was and I was like WELP

[defira85]

ALSO additional thoughts about my extensive personal canon based on revelations that come up when you examine the murals in the Lighthouse (if you've not had a quest to view the murals/memories and don't want spoilers don't look)

So ancient elves having been spirits who chose to became physical isn't that huge of a stretch, it's been bandied about in fandom for years now, specifically there's been all those theories about Solas having been a wisdom spirit

And it's just got me thinking about how he views the Thedas in my canon, where he meets a Spirit of Justice who chose to become mortal after initially merging with a human mage, because the spirit fell in love with a mortal woman (Elissa Cousland and Justice)

And where there's a mortal organisation that appears to have been founded on the scraps and remnants of his rebellion, and have been unknowingly working hard for centuries to maintain the prison in his absence even if they didn't necessarily know that's what they were doing (Jo Hawke and the Veiled Brotherhood)

And where the mortal human woman who interrupted his ritual the first time around is, on close inspection when he offers to heal her at the onset of Inquisition, not a mortal woman at all but another spirit BUT she doesn't KNOW she's a spirit

And he has to wonder just how much spirits - who are supposed to be static and unchanging lest they turn into demons - might actually be capable of evolution and that perhaps things are not as black and white as they were in his time, when he regrets becoming whole and he regrets the horror of physical form and yet here there are spirits who have nothing but abundant joy in their mortal selves, and who resolutely embrace the pain and frustrations of mortality because it means they get to experience life

When he met Therese Lavellan who joined the Inquisition under Corinne and bluntly told him "just because they share a name does not mean the people you speak of are my gods" and he thought she was just in denial about the truth and didn't stop to consider that stories evolve, faith evolves, and the facts of what happened ten thousand years ago do not necessarily make a difference to faith in the present

Wisdom can be stubborn. It can be resistant. It can lead to pride, if the desire to dig in and remain adamant overrules common sense

Maybe he needed time to absorb the fact that Thedas had changed. That people had changed. Spirits had changed. Faith had changed

Maybe he needed time to consider whether he too is capable of change

[defira85]

This is like the wildest shot ever but

You can't tell me the Viper of the Shadow Dragons (double dragon imagery) prefers to be known as Ashur in private and not expect me to go "Asha'bellanar?"

Squints

Is that you Flemeth under the Matthew Mercer voice

[defira85]

Fuck!!!

Felassan is so fucking hot!!! Now I'm even more fucking mad that Solas killed him!!!!!

FUCK

[defira85]

I don't think this is a spoiler but I'll tag it as such anyway - something is going on with the cape physics on my elven rogue Rook and it looks like she has Thedas' fattest ass by at least a Tevinter mile, sweet Andraste

[defira85]

I mentioned this a few times in other peoples posts but (DATV spoilers)

So... if I'm understanding the link between the Evanuris and their dragons correctly, if the soul of the dragon persists, is the corresponding Evanuris still immortal? Or does killing the body of the dragon render them mortal even if the soul body jumped

Because in a world state with Kieran kicking around, SOMEONE still has Urthemiel's soul. Which would possibly make June (??? I think Urthemiel belonged to June???) still immortal? Yes?

Kieran or Solas and Morrigan via Flemythal have the soul so?????

Or is this one of those things Bioware hoped to sweep under the rug by not having previous game choices matter?

[defira85]

Question! For DATV dwarf players, it's vaguely spoilery for early game events so I'll put it under the cut

Is there any sort of explanation in game or do the characters discuss why the lyrium dagger awakened something in Harding but not in Rook? OR HAS SOMETHING AWOKEN IN ROOK???? Can your Rooks hear the Titans, or do you hear the Oracle calling to you when it calls to Harding in early game? Or is it just never really addressed and they shrug and move on and Harding is the Specialest Dwarf in the World?

I have a casteless dwarf and a multi-generations-on-the-surface dwarf and I'm just trying to think about how these events would impact on them, particularly the second one who is a devout Andrastian like Harding

[defira85]

[defira85]

A Veilguard thought about the Forgotten Ones and the ongoing theme in the series about history being inconsistent because it's impossible to find an unbiased source of knowledge-

I'm incredibly excited about all the stuff the game is giving me about the Forgotten Ones (not least of all because Dhraoibhan and their clan in the Tirashan follows them) but I'm also like. Hmmm. I didn't want the Forgotten Ones to suddenly be the good guys and simply have been maligned in the history books by followers of the Evanuris, but I wish there had been more nuance to them. So far, it just seems like they're treating them as Just As Bad Or Worse which is a REAL stretch based on Ghilan'nain honestly

Like I got a codex entry about Anaris after Bellara's personal quest in the ruins with her brother and her annotations at the end of it about how HORRIFYING it sounded, when the codex was literally just like... Anaris describing an army or something. It sounded like propaganda, yeah, like the usual tyrannical bullshit hyping themselves up, but there was nothing overtly monstrous about it that should have warranted her reaction unless she's still being emotional after seeing Cyrian and that's colouring her views

Maybe the game will give me more info, I think I'm really only at about the halfway point (exploration of the world map I'm at 78%, Codex entries I'm at 50%) but I just!!! I want to know who these people were!!! Why they were aligned against the Evanuris!!! Were they First elves, like the Evanuris, or did they come later? Were they elves who were elevated, like Ghilan'nain, who tried to overthrow the Evanuris? Given the things Anaris was doing in the ruins with Cyrian, were they trying to reverse the elvification process and go back to being spirits?

What's their great evil?? How are they connected to the Blight given that Anduril used to fight them and come back coated in it?? They can't be Titan spirits because they're obsessed with elves, not dwarves, you'd think they'd be all over the dwarves if they were big mad at elves. Plus Anaris didn't look like a spirit I'd associate with titans and elves

(have we EVER seen a dwarf... ghost? In game? Any sort of spirit representation of a dwarf? Is this another cut-off-from-the-Fade and return-to-the-Stone thing, dwarfs don't have spirits? Spiritual essence???? That feels racist. Solas where did you put the dwarf souls when you murdered the titans)

Maybe all of these questions get answered in the game idk. Maybe I just need to be patient

(also!!! For Forgotten Ones, people SURE DO KNOW THEIR FUCKING NAMES A LOT)

[defira85]

What is the point of giving us a last name in game if not even the written missives use anything other than Rook

Yeah so I'm ignoring most of the surnames and using the ones I already came up with I think. My qunari girls will keep Thorne because it helps them complete their transition away from thinking of themselves as a part of the qun but I don't think anyone else will use them

Micaela can joke that Ingellvar is her father's family name and he was just a merchant because her mother married for love, so of course she kept her nobler family name